The Sword Of Angels (Gollancz S.F.) (16 page)

‘Pride,’ she muttered. ‘Stupid, stupid pride.’

How clear it was to her now that pride had brought her to this place. How much better her life would have been, if only she had listened to Minikin’s warnings. In Grimhold she had been safe. Now she was trapped in the most unsafe place a woman could imagine, surrounded by bars in a foreign land, in the clutches of a mad and lustful monster. She closed her eyes, wishing someone – anyone – might find her. She called to her Akari, Kirsil. The spirit lilted across her brain, young and as frightened as her host. Together they had already tried to summon help, but Kirsil was not like Sarlvarian, so old and strong, and they were too far away from Jador to make any kind of contact. Even the realm of the dead was off-limits to callow Kirsil. Still, Mirage took comfort in the spirit’s presence. As long as the Akari remained, she would not be completely alone.

Alarmed, Mirage opened her eyes as she suddenly heard footfalls approach. The pit of her stomach lurched. She leaned forward, trying to hide and see down the corridor at the same time. The light from the bare flame stirred in the breeze. Mirage held her breath as the footfalls drew nearer. The outline of Asher appeared before the bars.

‘Good evening.’

His voice trembled with delight. His malformed face remained in shadow. In his hand he held a wooden stool. The pockets of his butcher’s apron bulged with unseen tools. With his free hand he produced a key from his apron, using it to open the padlock on the iron bars. He worked gingerly, as if he’d done the manoeuvre a thousand times, then opened the cell door. When he was inside he placed the stool on the floor, closed the gate behind him and once more locked it closed. Mirage watched, shaking, as Asher took a seat on the stool, staring at her in the dim light. With the lamp behind him, she could barely see his poisoned features.

‘
Mirage
.’

He crooned the name, and the sound of it brought a smile to his ravaged face. Resting his hands on his dirty apron, he relaxed. Mirage noted the oily stains on his garb, the shining blood of new victims. Gore crusted his fingernails. His shoulders slumped slightly.

‘I’ve been busy tonight,’ he said wearily. ‘I did not mean to keep you waiting so long.’

Should she speak? Mirage didn’t want to plead. That was what he craved.

‘I have a whole prison of people like you to deal with now,’ he continued. ‘I wish I had a twin to share the work with, but alas there is only me. I suppose this interview could have waited till the morning, but I
wanted to see you. You’re so . . .’ He searched for the word. ‘Stimulating.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Mirage asked.

‘Talk,’ replied Asher. He grinned, a peculiar expression for someone soaked in blood. ‘So many of the women they brought from Liiria are cows. They’ve spent their lives with mercenaries, eating swill and sleeping on straw. But not you. You’re very beautiful, Mirage. Tell me – how did you come about such a name?’

‘It was given to me,’ said Mirage guardedly.

‘Of course it was. By your parents?’

Mirage hesitated. She knew answering his questions would be like walking a tightrope. ‘No. In Jador.’

‘But you are not from Jador, not originally. You do not have the dark skin of a Jadori woman. So you are from the northern lands?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you found yourself in Jador.’

Mirage nodded. The lord of the prison relaxed, oblivious to the moans rattling the corridor. His head cocked a little as he looked at her, admiring her with his wild eyes, the lids of which sagged with deformity. The scars on his cheeks reminded her of her own.

‘Corvalos Chane thinks much of you,’ said Asher. ‘To have brought you here on his own; you should feel honoured. He is the right hand of Raxor, our king. He would not waste his time with you if he was not sure your skull held secrets. Do you know why he brought you to me, Mirage?’

‘Don’t make me answer that,’ Mirage implored. ‘I already told you what I know.’

‘Stand up.’

Shaken by the order, Mirage got slowly to her feet. She stood before the torturer, her hands at her sides, and could not look at him.

‘Do not look away,’ he ordered. ‘Look at me always. Your eyes will tell me if you lie or not. Now answer me.’

‘What?’

‘Tell me why Chane brought you to me.’

Mirage swallowed hard. ‘To be questioned.’

‘You could have been questioned by anyone. Chane could have questioned you. He brought you to me because I am the best at what I do. I have a gift, you see. Look at all these people on my apron!’ Asher proudly pulled at the garment, showing off its numerous stains. ‘I learned a lot tonight.’

The sickening boast turned Mirage’s legs to rubber. As she began to waver, she steeled herself.

‘I think you are insane,’ she said, ‘to hurt people the way you do.’

‘We all have to make a living, pretty Mirage. That is my answer when
someone looks at me the way you do, with such disdain. Do you know, all of Raxor’s men think they are my better. Even Chane, that miserable cutthroat. Why? Because what I do is distasteful? Someone has to bash in the sheep’s brains before the mutton can be served.’

It was a demented argument. Mirage forced herself not to look away.

‘You want to torture me,’ she said. ‘I can’t stop you, because you’ll never listen to reason, will you?’

‘I want the entire truth,’ replied Asher. ‘Please do not make the mistake so many others have about me. We do not choose our gifts in life, girl. Mine were thrust upon me, just as beauty was thrust upon you.’ He leaned closer, examining her face and the curves of her figure. ‘What is it like to be so lovely? In my work, I do not see many pretty young women. It’s my face, you see. They shun me. I want to know what it’s like for you. So easy, I’d wager.’

Mirage didn’t know how to answer the odd question. Mere months ago, she had been as scarred and damaged as Asher.

‘Would I be here if I weren’t beautiful to you?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know if Chane would have paid enough attention to you.’ Asher laughed, delighted at the irony. ‘You see? Beauty is a curse sometimes.’

His laughter angered Mirage. ‘What are you going to do to me?’

Asher stopped chuckling. ‘There was a woman brought in with you, a little one from Norvor. Dark hair. Do you remember her?’

‘Yes.’

Asher inspected his apron, found the appropriate bloodstain, and pointed at it. Mirage blanched as her bravado drained away.

‘I have a favourite knife to use on people like her,’ said Asher. He reached into the pockets of his apron and took out a thin knife with a long, hooked blade. ‘You would be amazed at how long someone can live if you use the right tool. I asked her what she was doing in Liiria. She was the whore of a mercenary named Devyn. It was the usual, tiresome questions. She told me nothing useful.’ Asher held the knife close to his face, turning it so that Mirage could see its fine edge. ‘She didn’t look anything like you, Mirage. She was ugly, like me. I did her a kindness by killing her.’

He looked sad suddenly, like a little boy with a broken toy. The madness on his face ebbed a little, replaced by something like shame.

‘I wish Chane hadn’t brought you to me,’ he said. ‘You don’t belong in this butcher’s shop. That’s what this place is, you know. I kill cows here. But you’re not a cow, Mirage. You are a beautiful butterfly.’

Asher touched his face, brushing the narrow blade against his uneven cheek.

‘I’ve seen you looking at me. You don’t realize how you stare, do you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ groped Mirage. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘I’ve been stared at all of my life.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Asher shrugged. ‘It isn’t your fault. You couldn’t know what it’s like to be me.’

How little you know, thought Mirage
. Instead she asked, ‘What happened to you?’

Asher shrugged. ‘Who knows what happens in the womb of a whore? My mother was a drunken slut. She was diseased, a gift from all the men she bedded. I was born like this – that was her gift to me.’ He laughed. ‘Can you imagine such a woman? A bitch.’

‘And the scars?’

‘Beatings. I told you, my mother had many men. One of them favoured a horsebrush.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Stop saying that,’ spat Asher. ‘Your pity won’t save you.’ His face softened. ‘But I do regret this. I want you to know that. I’m going to get the truth out of you, Mirage. All of it, everything you know about Baron Glass, even things you’ve forgotten. It will be like magic!’

The knife held against his haunting face made Mirage wither. Her mind ran with images of blood and her own mangled body. So far she had been strong. Now, though, she could not be strong. Faced with Asher and his cherished knife, she crumbled.

‘I don’t know anything,’ she moaned, dropping to her knees. ‘I swear to heaven, I don’t know.’

She could not look at him any more. She faced the floor as tears overcame her, shaking and hating herself for it. Asher rose from his stool, watching her. He said nothing, letting her sob. Unable to control herself, Mirage dropped lower to the floor, like a frightened house cat. She glanced up, waiting for the torturer to fall on her, to feel the slice of his hook blade. He glared at her, completely unemotional, then buried the blade of his knife upright into the seat of the stool.

‘I will leave this here to argue with you,’ he said.

Then, to Mirage’s great relief, he unlocked the padlock to her cell, let himself out, and closed and locked the gate behind him. He spared her one last, longing look before disappearing down the dark corridor.

Choked with tears, Mirage stared at the knife protruding from the stool. Unable to move, she could not avert her eyes from it. She knew it wasn’t mercy she had witnessed. Asher would return, and when he did he would bring his lustful appetite with him. It might be an hour or a day. Either way, it would be an eternity.

To Gilwyn, the world was like an ocean, black and featureless. He felt its tug. He struggled to awaken. His eyes fluttered open to the darkness of the ocean, but the ocean was like space, cold and completely without end. He could not feel his body, but he did feel afraid, and he knew that he was somewhere immortal, trapped in a place of magic where he should not be able to tread. His eyes – if indeed they were eyes – studied the darkness. He gazed down to glimpse his hands, but although he felt them moving they were nowhere to be found.

Gilwyn fought to remember. He could not recall his last conscious thoughts, and he considered that he was sleeping, and that he had been asleep for a very long time. He knew his name, and he knew his mission, and it all came suddenly back to him, how he had fled across the desert, being chased by Aztar’s men.

And then?

He could not remember.

‘Hello?’ he called. He felt a presence in the darkness, straining to reach him. A familiar tremor coursed across his disembodied mind. ‘Ruana?’

He had only to speak her name, and she was there. Ruana’s sweet face shimmered in the darkness near him, shining with relief. Her hand reached out but did not touch him.

‘Gilwyn, you are alive.’

Puzzled, Gilwyn felt himself shrug. ‘Ruana, where am I? What is this place?’

‘Gilwyn, you must go back,’ said Ruana. ‘You are alive.’

‘Go back? Where? I don’t understand. Why did you bring me here?’

‘I did not bring you here, Gilwyn. This is not the place of the dead.’

She had read his thoughts, and her answer confused him. ‘No?’ Gilwyn looked around, but could see nothing familiar, only darkness. ‘Where, then?’

‘Your mind, Gilwyn,’ said Ruana. ‘This is your mind.’

The emptiness seized him. ‘My mind?’ He groped through the blackness. ‘What’s happened to me?’

‘You must awaken, Gilwyn. You must try very hard. Do you understand? Try
now
.’

It was like a horrible dream, but this time there were no monsters chasing him or molasses to slow his feet. Ruana’s words meant little to Gilwyn, yet they frightened him. His lungs filled with air, yet still he couldn’t breathe. If this was his mind, then it was an empty void he couldn’t fill.

‘Gilwyn, you must rouse yourself,’ Ruana continued. ‘You are very close. That is why I can reach you now. Are you listening? Can you wake yourself?’